Scientific Research
Heart disease. Diabetes. Arthritis. Cancer. Osteoporosis high blood pressure and stroke Alzheimer's and all those other unpleasant conditions that seem inevitable with age. A large and growing body of research points to one main culprit inflammation.
Inflammation is the body's short-term defense against injury, stress, or bacterial or viral intruders, but over the long term, it wreaks havoc on your health. Sounds grim, doesn't it? Well, the news is not all bad. The so-called "lifestyle" diseases are not inevitable. Let's take a closer look.
The bad guys: free radicals, stress hormones, and chronic inflammation
The aging process is complex, and far from fully understood by scientists. However, the relationship between excess free radicals, chronic inflammation, excess stress hormones, cellular damage, and aging is clearly demonstrated by a growing body of scientific research. Here's a simplified overview of what happens to all of us.
As your body goes about its normal metabolic business, one of the waste byproducts it produces are funny little extra oxygen molecules that contain an unpaired electron. These extra oxygen molecules are called free radicals, and they're like a bunch of hooligans stirring up trouble on a Saturday night. They steal electrons from healthy molecules, damaging cell structures in the process.
No matter what you do, free radicals are inevitable. However, when you're under stress of any kind (physical, mental, or emotional), your body creates even more free radicals. That's because the body's natural response to stress is the production of certain hormones, which stimulate the production of free radicals. The hormone cortisol is one of the main culprits, although there are others involved as well.
An excess of free radicals causes our bodies to oxidize at the cellular level. ("Oxidize," by the way, is just a fancy word for "rust.") When those troublemaking free radicals steal the electrons from other molecules, the body's inflammatory response is stimulated. It's a corrective action taken by the body, but over the long run, it leads to disease and aging.
The heroes: dietary phytochemicals
If free radicals are like a bunch of thugs constantly vandalizing cell structures, dietary phytochemicals (DPCs for short) are like the S.W.A.T. team. They're the first line of defense in the fight against aging and disease. That's because they act as antioxidants, donating their own electrons to the free radicals. This stabilizes the free radicals, stops the damage in its tracks, and suppresses the inflammatory response.
Antioxidant DPCs are found in abundance in fruits and vegetables, and they're the most powerful known way to protect against free radical damage. To get the recommended amount of dietary phytochemicals, your body requires nine to ten servings of fruit and vegetables every single day. But it's not easy. (Reality check: how many people do you know who eat this way?)
Even if you do eat ten servings of fruits and vegetables per day, how do you know you're getting enough antioxidants? Well, there is one good scientific way to tell
ORAC: Comparing apples to oranges. And berries to spinach. And broccoli to kiwi.
All fruits and vegetables are not created equal, especially when it comes to their ability to neutralize the damaging effects of free radicals. Several years ago, food nutrition researchers at Tuft University's USDA-sponsored Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging developed the ORAC test. ORAC stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, and it's a way to measure the antioxidant power found in foods.
The recommended daily intake is 4,000 to 5,000 ORAC units per day under normal conditions and more if the body is under physical or emotional stress. The average individual gets only about 1200-1700 per day less than half of what's needed for optimum health!
And how do you know you're choosing the right fruits and veggies? Spinach, for instance, has twice the amount of ORAC per gram as kiwi. Oranges have three times more than apples. Chokeberries (used in our BerryBoost formulas) have 8 times the amount of ORAC per gram than broccoli. Broccoli has 4 times more than string beans. And elderberries (used in BerryBoost formulas) have 5 times more than spinach. (If this sounds suspiciously like one of those word problems you had on math tests in junior high, don't worry. We can help you solve this problem.)
The bottom line? Your mother was right. Eat your fruits and veggies. But to arm yourself with optimum protection, you may need to take it a step further
To the rescue: whole food concentrates
Unlike vitamin, mineral, and phytochemical isolates, whole food concentrates are real food. In a single food, numerous different dietary phytochemicals (DPCs) act together synergistically. Nutritional scientists are only just beginning to understand what each one does, and how vital its interaction is with the others.
When you consume a whole food concentrate, you consume DPCs the way nature intended, where the naturally occurring DPCs are present in just the right ratios needed to interact with, balance, and support each other. It's the combination that provides the most protective effect. That's why whole food concentrates are far superior to isolated vitamins and minerals.
When a whole food concentrate is created, most of the water, fiber and sugars are removed. The remaining nutrient-rich food, of a syrupy consistency, can then be spray-dried to create a powder and made into capsules. You get all the same dietary phytochemicals, vitamins, and minerals you'd get from the food in its just-picked form only it's much more concentrated.
Two of the most powerful categories of DPCs are anthocyanins and carotenoids, and you can find them in BerryBoost. [click here to view our product line]
Don't take our word for it.
At BerryBoost we have concentrated on the most promising of all DPC's, anthocyanins, found most abundantly in ApexBerries and carotenoids (alpha and beta carotene) found in orange vegetables such as carrots and pumpkins, (lycopene) tomatoes, and (lutien and zeaxathin) found in Kale.
Studies show that carotenoids can stimulate the immune system, quench free radicals, and act as anti-inflammatory agents. Anthocyanins do all that, plus contain anti-viral properties. And the sulforaphanes found in kale act as antioxidants and have anti-bacterial properties. Research shows that different antioxidants affect different organs and conditions, which is why a broad range of dietary phytochemicals is so important.
You won't find a single claim on our website or in our literature that isn't well supported by hard scientific evidence. If you'd like to review the evidence for yourself, you'll find extensive nutritional research citations right here on our website.
But if you're already convinced, why wait? Begin protecting your health today with BerryBoost products.
Every one of our products comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Within 30 days, if you are dissatisfied for any reason, simply e-mail us at return@berryboost.com with your name, date of purchase, and reason for return. We will immediately credit your account for the total cost of your purchase.
